The Ins & Outs Of Heredity

inherited health

Obesity Inheritance of family conditions is unfortunately a reality, and genes have been associated with obesity for a long time now. It is believed that children have a 75% chance of inheriting a mother's weight condition. So if your mother is obese, you have a 75% chance of being overweight too.

A theory on obesity is that some people might have a type of protein in their body that alters their feeling of satiety. In other words, people with that protein do not feel full when they eat. Another theory is that an abnormal gene called Beta-3 could alter metabolisms in obese individuals. This gene is supposed to alter how the body heats itself by naturally burning fat.

Diseases Some diseases are also a result of inheritance, or rather genetic mutation. Inheriting them from your parents does not occur automatically if one of your parents has a particular condition; there are certain rules that apply it.

Some diseases require both parents to have an ailment for you to inherit it. For instance, both parents must have recessive blonde hair genes for a child to have blonde hair. This is called the "Autosomal Recessive" pattern of inheritance and gives a child a 25% chance of inheriting a condition from his family.

Here are a few diseases acquired through autosomal recessive inheritance:

Hemochromatosis

Kidney disease

Cystic fibrosis

Sickle cell anemia

Muscular dystrophy

There are also "Autosomal Dominant" diseases in which one parent with the ailment can pass it down to their children. People with such diseases have a 50/50 chance of passing their condition to their children.

Diseases include:

Huntington's disease

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy

Kidney disease

Retinitis pigmentosa

Epilepsy

Men are more likely to inherit diseases of the "X-linked" category. This type of inheritance occurs when the recessive gene is located on the X-chromosome. Because mothers give their X chromosomes to their children, diseases of this category are passed down through the mother. Men only have one X-chromosome, so they are highly prone to accept recessive genes from their mothers. Male pattern baldness belongs to this type of inheritance.

Hemophilia

Color blindness

Duchenne muscular dystrophy

Fragile X syndrome

Male pattern baldness

Finally, there is a type of inheritance called "Mitochondrial Inheritance," which is also passed down from mother to child. In this case, a disease lies dormant in the female egg, avoiding the X Y chromosome rules.

Inheritance vs. Behaviorism Many still debate whether it's the environment that causes diseases or whether it's inheritance, but scientists are now leaning more towards the theory that it could be a combination of the two.

Inheritance does not mean you will get a disease and die. It is now believed that inheritance also affects our predisposition to develop afflictions. The environment affects all people, but some are simply more inclined to develop certain conditions, and genes may play a role in this.

If one of your parents has or had any of these cancers, here are your chances of developing it as well.

Disease

Chances of Heredity

Prostate Cancer

45%

Pancreatic Cancer

36%

Colon Cancer

35%

Bladder Cancer

31%

Stomach Cancer

28%

Lung Cancer

26%

Leukemia

21%

in the name of science

Inheritance is not here to scare people; it is a preventative science. Knowing how it works and how it can affect you can save your life one day. Genes are also becoming important tools in figuring out how some diseases work, and knowing how they work will help scientists cure them some day. Having said this, it is important to know your parents' health history so that you know what to expect in the future.